Side-bar lock cylinders have come into wide use in automotive ignition locks. Until now, no product or method has emerged in the prior art successfully to opens, these locks for removal from their mountings for key replacement without destructive damage to either the lock cylinder or the entire lock assembly, rendering them unreusable and requiring their replacement.
The present novel invention has been conceived and developed to solve this problem, and its principal object is to provide to the locksmith inexpensive apparatus for the purpose and easy undamaged ignition lock removal. A more specific object of this invention is to provide as apparatus an economical kit of tools capable of carrying out the invention's method which applies pressure on the ignition lock cylinder's side-bar while urging the lock cylinder's wafers into alignment so that the side-bar latch is retracted, allowing the lock to be opened and removed. A still further object of the invention is to provide a set of tools as apparatus which are inexpensive to manufacture, simple to use, and capable of saving ignition locks for reuse rather than destroying them.